Barry Harris

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Barry Harris

Barry Doyle Harris (born December 15, 1929 in Detroit , † December 8, 2021 in Weehawken , New Jersey ) was an American bop jazz pianist ( bebop and hardbop ) and music teacher .

Live and act

Like his childhood friend Tommy Flanagan, Harris came from Detroit, where his mother was a church pianist. He learned the piano at the age of four and won a prize in a local piano competition in the mid-1940s. He played with the resident Thad Jones and Blue Mitchell (and with his childhood friends Pepper Adams , Doug Watkins and Paul Chambers ) and accompanied traveling jazz musicians such as Lester Young , Lee Konitz , Sonny Stitt , Wardell Gray , Miles Davis , as well as the resident pianist of a jazz club a session withCharlie Parker . In 1950 the first recordings were made in Detroit under his own name when he recorded two tracks with Frank Foster , John Evans (guitar), Ray McKinney (bass) and Ralph Clark (drums). In 1955 he worked on Donald Byrd 's first album with (First Flight) ; In 1956 he toured with Max Roach , played with Art Farmer and in 1960 with Cannonball Adderley . In the same year he moved to New York .

In the 1960s, Harris have been a regular companion of Coleman Hawkins (1965-1969), took Dexter Gordon ( "Biting the Apple", 1976), Hank Mobley , Yusef Lateef and Illinois Jacquet and assisted in 1974 his example Thelonious Monk , with whom he had close contact in the apartment of Pannonica de Koenigswarter , who looked after him in Monk's last years (he can also be heard with Flanagan in the documentary Thelonious Monk - straight no chaser by Charlotte Zwerin from 1988). As a pianist, he is also heavily influenced by Bud Powell . In 1982 he founded the Jazz Cultural Center in New York, a mixture of teaching facility (he taught jazz and jazz piano with his own method until old age , as in 1958) and performance venue for himself and musicians of a similar direction. In 2013 he performed at Village Vanguard with his trio of Ray Drummond (bass) and Leroy Williams (drums). In the field of jazz, he was involved in 188 recording sessions between 1950 and 2019, according to Tom Lord .

The much- touted bebop scale goes back to Harris' teaching activity, but he called it the "sixth-diminished" scale .

In 1989 he received the NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship . In 2000 he made a guest appearance on Regina Carter's album Motor City Moments .

He died on December 8, 2021 of complications from a COVID-19 disease.

Discographic notes

As a band leader or soloist

As a sideman

  • Dexter Gordon: Gettin 'Around (Blue Note, 1965)
  • Coleman Hawkins: Wrapped Tight (Impulse, 1965)
  • Yusef Lateef: Eastern Sounds (OJC, 1961)
  • Charles McPherson: Con Alma (OJC, 1965)
  • Lee Morgan : The Sidewinder (Blue Note 1963)
  • Red Rodney: Bluebird (Camden, 1973-81)

Web links

Obituaries

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ a b Obituary at NPR
  2. ↑ The Jazz Cultural Center existed between August 1982 and August 1987 at 368 Eighth Avenue, between 28th and 29th Street in Manhattan.
  3. ↑ January Jazz Listings in The New York Times
  4. ↑ Tom Lord : The Jazz Discography (online, accessed November 24, 2019)
  5. ↑ Blue Note Artists - Dexter Gordon. Retrieved September 23, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Harris, Barry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Harris, Barry Doyle (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz pianist
BIRTH DATE December 15, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Detroit
DATE OF DEATH December 8, 2021
PLACE OF DEATH Weehawken , New Jersey